Picosecond laser desorption kinetics of poly-(ethylene glycol)

For ethylene glycol and poly-(ethylene glycol) oligomers (PEGs) with average masses of 600 and 1500 Da, translational energy distributions following picosecond laser desorption from a silica surface were determined for two different laser fluences. Desorption and dissociation are found to be well described by thermal equilibrium kinetics even for heating rates exceeding 1013 K/s. For the intact desorption of monolayer coverages of PEGs from silica surfaces, picosecond laser heating was found to be less efficient than classical heating.